Essential Search and Social Media Promotion Tips for News Content

Marketing and PR greatness must include equal parts intelligence, creativity and a focus on results. But there’s one more important ingredient necessary to help you stand out: enthusiasm.

Serena Ehrlich from BusinessWire has all of these characteristics and at the Digital Summit LA conference, she shared a cornucopia of practical advice about media relations and promotion of news content with zest and gusto.

Here are a few highlights.

It’s common sense and supported by research that industry media is a source of news and trusted information for buyers of every kind. Consumers and journalists have changed right along with the technology used to discover, consume and engage with content.

Therefore, it’s essential that marketing and communications professionals empathize with their audience to understand their preferences and give them what they want.

Because newsrooms have shrunk and journalists are overwhelmed with bad pitches along with a news cycle that runs 24/7 it’s a challenge to stand out. But no fear, you can really increase your chances of successful media pickups by following a few news release tips from Serena:

Include usable support data

Be interesting

Be relevant to target audience

Be catchy

Include quotes

Include multimedia

Of course, outbound media pitching isn’t the only way journalists can be exposed to your news content. Search engines and social networks can deliver thousands of additional readers that are actively looking for information that your brand has to give.

That means making sure news releases and newsroom content is optimized for the right keywords and promoted through social media. Serena suggested using Google Trends to find keywords to add to your release headlines to increase opens, which is great. You can also use tools like keywordtool.io, Moz Keyword Explorer or if you have a Google AdWords account, their Keyword Planner. (we’ve covered press release optimization extensively here in the past in case you want to venture that way)

Serena brought up that since journalists are increasingly judged on the traffic or page view performance of the articles they write, be sure to let them know when they cover your story, that you will share what they write across your social networks. If they know you’ll help promote the article, they might be more inclined to use you for the story and again in the future.

When it comes to social media promotion, Serena stressed the importance of earning trust. How do you do that? Here are her tips:

Social networks are where people spend their time, period. And to engage with customers, brands need to be where the customers are. To help you promote your news content where people are actually spending time, Serena shared these tips for LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat and YouTube:

Reddit Tips: Passionate, Smart, Informed
– Reddit has a large audience with 45,000 targeted communities
– Share links to drive traffic, but be sure to participate with the Reddit community first to build relationships (don’t just dump your links)
– Only share relevant information

On YouTube, be sure to:
– Create content for all sales funnel steps
– Determine what your audience watches in long form and shorten it
– Create a video of text content
-Try FB live to announce news
– Try www.gifyoutube.com
– Try Sponsorships with BizWireTV

There’s a lot to think about if you want to do well with your news content across so many social channels. Hopefully these tips are useful for your efforts at getting news content noticed by journalists through both outbound and inbound efforts.

You can connect with Serena on Twitter @Serena and on LinkedIn.

This is the second of two posts from the recent Digital Summit Los Angeles conference I attended. The first featured Loren McDonald of IBM (Is Cognitive Technology the End of Marketing As We Know It?).